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Re "I came away from the experience impressed and intrigued, but without a clear sense of how this technology will improve productivity. It is unclear to me, for example, how much effort is required to create virtual objects."

I think this comment (from the article) sums up my thoughts in all these attempts to introduce new technologies to online meetings.

I love VR, and play with my Quest 2 most days. I also have a slight interest in using VR more, even for work.

So, I've followed the hype behind things like Meta's attempts to get home working and meetings working with VR. I've also tried various apps that supposedly recreate the feeling of being with your co workers.

I've seen the videos of Oculus avatars all floating around a whiteboard having a meeting, or all looking at various web pages. Not everyone's job is like that. Not everyone has cosy little meetings about the look of a webpage (although I can understand that the staff at Meta would).

I'm working partly from home and partly from the office ATM. Ironically, a lot of my job involves remote access to PCs and VMs, so in theory could benefit from working in VR, but it really doesn't benefit.

None of the above has increased my productivity, and none has offered me a real, tangible advantage over running Teams on my PC at home. In fact, running Teams on my PC has the advantage that it's easy to walk away from the PC without having to remove your headset, which is probably plugged in via USB (even with the extended battery I have, I'm lucky to get more than 4 hours use without charging) and may also have a set of headphones attached. Actually getting away from the screen for a bit every hour or so is actually good health and safety advice. You don't need to physically move, just point your eyes somewhere else for a couple of minutes.